A Miasma of Corruption: The United Nations at 50

by Stefan Halper

Stefan Halper, a former White House and State Department official, is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Executive Summary

The United Nations is under increasing attack by critics in the United States and other countries. At the heart of the organization's mounting problems is an almost total lack of accountability, which gives rise to suspicions of wholesale corruption. Existing evidence indicates that corruption and mismanagement go beyond the routine fraud, waste, and abuse of resources that mark all public-sector enterprises.

UN budgets are shrouded in secrecy, and the actual performance of the myriad bureaucracies is translucent, if not opaque. There is no reliable way to determine whether the various and often competing specialized agencies (at least two dozen UN agencies are involved in food and agricultural policy) are doing their jobs, and many UN activities, even if they are of some value, can be carried out better and more efficiently by other groups. Other activities should not be undertaken at all.

Available evidence coupled with the United Nations' unwillingness to undergo a thorough audit raise serious questions about its mission and the means used to carry it out. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's rationale that the world body is accountable to all its 185 member-states is meaningless. Such an amorphous standard of accountability is akin to saying no one is responsible.

The United Nations is in dire need of reform, starting with a comprehensive, independent audit. Even if a complete audit were performed, however, there is no guarantee anything would be done about the problems identified. And radical change may not be possible, no matter how obvious the need. Given all the earlier, failed attempts to put things right, even on a limited basis, optimism about meaningful reform may be an exercise in wishful thinking.

Introduction

The United Nations' 50th birthday came and went this
past year, and while some people treated the event as a celebration,
others were far less enthusiastic. Indeed, there was decidedly more
derision than congratulation in the United States. That would have seemed
odd only a few years ago. Few in the attentive public then thought the
United Nations was in need of serious, much less radical, reform. To
the contrary, with the end of the Cold War, most Americans, especially
members of the opinion-shaping elites, regarded the United Nations as
more relevant than ever. By the organization's golden anniversary, however,
criticism was being expressed even by UN sympathizers in the Clinton
administration, who view themselves as modern internationalists parrying
the thrusts of uncouth Philistine isolationists. Suddenly, it seemed,
critics of the United Nations were no longer confined to the flat-earth
faction of the political right, which had long considered the body a
world government in the making. The recent relatively mild critiques
from the foreign policy establishment, though, are woefully overdue
and understated.

An increasing center of frustration with UN failures
can be found in the U.S. Congress. Some members have even called for
U.S. withdrawal from the world body and the expulsion of the organization
from its New York City headquarters. And the arguments of the abolitionists
are getting a respectful hearing from the mainstream press.[1]

An American withdrawal would almost certainly mean
the collapse of the United Nations. Without the generous, if unwilling,
support of U.S. taxpayers, the United Nations would face imminent financial
ruin. A decision to leave the world body may still be a decade or so
away, but disgust with the United Nations is growing, not receding.
Recent and expensive peacekeeping failures in Angola, Cambodia, Bosnia,
and Somalia have greatly fueled the discontent.[2]

The Clinton administration's early, naive hope that the
United States could offload nettlesome foreign conflicts on the United
Nations--by sending American troops, who would serve under international
command, to second that body's efforts--seems far more remote than the
mere three years ago it was first suggested. But the rapid fading of
the administration's early dreams is a measure of the current pessimism
about the United Nations and its multitude of agencies that, with little
rhyme or reason, have over the decades grown like "a coral reef,"
in the words of John Bolton, former assistant secretary of state for
international organizations.[3]

Last June on the stage of San Francisco's War Memorial
Opera House, distinguished speakers from around the world, including
President Clinton, labored mightily to echo the hopes expressed for
the United Nations by its founders in June 1945 at the organization's
charter-signing ceremony, attended by President Harry Truman. The anniversary
efforts, however, fell flat. The contrast in rhetoric between the American
presidents was instructive. Truman spoke glowingly of ending war through
collective security, a hope anchored to the expectation of continuing
the wartime alliance in perpetuity. In contrast, Clinton spoke defensively
of reforming the middle-aged organization to fend off the "new
isolationists" supposedly hungering for the kill. He did not even
mention Bosnia, the United Nations' most recent and visible collective
security mission.[4]

Reforming the United Nations, coupled with a less exalted
vision of what it might usefully do in the next century, is now safely
within the mainstream of American "informed" discussion of
the world body. The prevailing assumption underlying much of the talk
is that the organization is in trouble, but its problems are fixable:
budgets and bureaucracies can be trimmed; waste, duplication, and fraud
can be uncovered and eliminated; and finances can be put on a sounder
basis. Moderate reformers also concede that peacekeeping missions need
to be more carefully defined and that there should be less talk and
more action, particularly in connection with humanitarian services.
And what if such steps are not taken? Unfortunately, that question is
rarely addressed.

Any prescriptions for measured reform may well be much
too little and much, much too late. After all, as members of Congress
on both sides of the aisle well know, previous attempts at correcting
the United Nations' many failings have come largely to naught. The most
significant congressional effort at overhaul was the so-called Kassebaum-Solomon
amendment passed in 1985. That measure required the United States to
reduce its 25 percent share of the general UN budget to 20 percent unless
a weighted system of voting on budget matters was introduced in the
General Assembly. The legislation did spark some attempts at cutting
spending and reducing the number of top administrators, but in general
the United Nations has ignored or evaded the clear purpose of Kassebaum-Solomon.[5]

Such a frustrating record suggests that the problems
may be inherent and irredeemable rather than incidental and correctable.
It also implies that the United Nations as constituted is so fundamentally
corrupt that no redesign, no matter how clever the blueprint, would
ever be carried out. Although that suspicion is not yet in the mainstream
of debate, it deserves a careful hearing. But first we need to understand
how the United Nations has gotten itself in the perhaps irreparable
fix it is in.

The UN Family and How It Grew

American Wilsonian internationalists saw the United Nations
as a second--and perhaps final--chance to create a world body that would
preserve the peace through collective security. President Wilson's plea
for U.S. membership in the League of Nations--which he could have gotten
with a few minor compromises with the Senate--was rebuffed by that body.
Wilson's ideological heirs believed that the lack of U.S. participation
was the league's fatal flaw, leading to its ineffectiveness in dealing
with the wave of aggression in the 1930s.

A Second Chance for Wilsonianism

There is actually little evidence to support that contention.[6]
Nevertheless, the Wilsonian analysis persuaded a generation of American
policymakers and opinion makers that the lack of an effective world
organization was the root cause of World War II. Moreover, with the
arrival of the atomic age, creation of a capable global security organization
seemed, not an exercise in idealism, but a stark need. Either a UN-based
system of collective security would be forged by the wartime allies--large
and small alike--or the planet's history would come to a swift and ugly
end. To make sure that the latter would not happen, the UN Security
Council--in effect, its five permanent members--was given the power
to decide what measures should be taken in case of a threat to the peace.
In contrast, the league's council could make recommendations for action
that individual member states were free to ignore.[7]

Hopes for an effective United Nations became an early
casualty of the Cold War. Any peace-preserving action could be stalled
in the Security Council by a Soviet veto, while General Assembly resolutions
passed under the aegis of the United States could be simply ignored
by Moscow and its growing list of satellites.[8]

Nevertheless, the United States doggedly sought to use
the organization whenever possible. Truman, for example, insisted on
a UN role as a collective guarantor of the Korean peninsula's security.
That was obtained, but only after a major diplomatic effort to persuade
reluctant allies to join in the effort to repel North Korea's armed
aggression in June 1950. (A fortuitous Soviet boycott of the Security
Council prevented a veto of the UN "police action.") Later,
when Stalin sent back his representative, the United States obtained
what it needed to continue the mission through a constitutionally dubious
Uniting for Peace resolution passed by the then-friendly General Assembly.
Under that resolution, the General Assembly would assume the powers
of the Security Council when the latter body was stymied by the veto
of a permanent member.

The Transformation of UN Membership

All of that, of course, was possible only because the
United States enjoyed the support of a majority in the 51- member General
Assembly. That margin vanished forever in the mid-1950s when a momentary
thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations following the death of Stalin allowed
the admission of 20 new members. Five years later the General Assembly
had 82 members, nearly all former colonies of the European powers.[9]
By 1970 the number had jumped yet again to 108; by 1980 it was 136;
and by 1995 the General Assembly had a total of 185 member-states, each
with one vote.

The vastly expanded General Assembly was soon dominated
by non-Western states whose elites seldom shared the political culture
of the democratic West, much less any belief in market economics. The
new majority felt free to exercise its power by passing resolutions
favorable to the Third World and its member-states' various pet projects.
Although the Third World was hardly homogeneous, operating on an identical
agenda, a mutually convenient system of logrolling soon came into being.
For example, Arab states would vote for black African resolutions against
South African apartheid, provided that the black African countries in
turn voted against Israel when called upon to do so. All factions frequently
voted against the United States, although they were seldom as harsh
with the Soviet Union--as President John F. Kennedy discovered when
the nonaligned states refused to condemn the USSR for resuming aboveground
nuclear tests in September 1961.[10]

Placing Financial Burdens on the United States

Nowhere was the power of the new majority in the General
Assembly more evident than in the critical area of finance. In 1945
the United States was assessed 39.98 percent of the UN budget, while
the poorest members were each assessed a minimum of 0.04 percent. Although
the U.S. assessment eventually dropped to 25 percent for the general
bud- get, that decline is not as large as the decline in America's share
of global economic output. The U.S. share of the peacekeeping budget,
which is usually larger than the general budget, remains 31 percent.
The UN budget is actually three budgets: regular, peacekeeping, and
voluntary contributions (which cover humanitarian and development programs).
The total cost comes to some $10.5 billion a year.[11] Moreover, the
General Assembly's financial bias in favor of Third World members has
become more pronounced over the decades. The General Assembly reduced
the assessment for poor states to 0.02 percent in 1973 and then cut
it again to a minuscule 0.01 percent five years later.[12]

By 1992, 79 members were paying the minimum amount to
the regular budget while another 9 were chipping in 0.02 percent. That
meant that a majority of voting members in the General Assembly contributed
less than 1 percent of the UN's general budget while just 14 members
contributed 84 percent. A similar situation prevails with the peacekeeping
budget.[13] That fundamental disconnect between power and the purse
is the central factor in the corruption of the United Nations and has
led to a proliferation of agencies, an oversized bureaucracy, and general
irresponsibility.

From Swords into Plowshares into Jobs for the Boys

There is no need for romanticism about the Third World.
Those who saw those nations as poor and exploited--and therefore virtuous--were
hopelessly out of touch with reality. Third World countries may be poor,
but the elites that run them are decidedly not. Nor does their rule
very often rest on the consent of the governed, even in theory. Although
democratic rule has spread a bit in the post-Cold War era, the most
dramatic gains for democracy have been in the former communist Second
World and Latin America, which never quite fit into the tiers monde
where Asian warlords feel comfortable rubbing shoulders with Middle
Eastern and African military dictators at meetings of the Non-Aligned
Movement and the UN General Assembly.

The Opaque Budgetary Process

A kleptocratic culture of nonaccountability at home was
easily transferred to the world body. How it was managed is less clearly
understood. That is because UN budgetary procedures have for decades
been covered by a shroud of obfuscation and secrecy--all unnecessary
for an international organization that is supported in great part by
American and Western taxpayers.

Two observers well versed in the ways of the United Nations
summarize its budgetary process as follows:

A draft two-year program budget is proposed by the
Secretary-General to the General Assembly. Prior to the Assembly's
discussions, this draft budget is reviewed by the intergovernmental
Committee for Program and Coordination and the 16-member expert Advisory
Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions. Apprised of the
comments and recommendations of these two bodies, the General Assembly
and its Fifth (Administrative and Budgetary) Committee carry out an
in-depth scrutiny of the budget, which goes through two readings in
the Fifth Committee and one final reading in the plenary of the Assembly.
A few years ago, formal agreement was reached by the General Assembly
that the budget must be passed by consensus and cannot be adopted
by a vote.[14]

The requirement for consensus supposedly cured the problem
of the many poor members' arriving at a budget paid for by the few rich.

In reality, the above description of the budgetary process
is more anatomical than physiological. By the time the budget is formally
considered by the General Assembly, nearly all the decisions have been
made within bodies dominated by the Third World majority. The Committee
for Program and Coordination is a prime example of the problem. As a
result of U.S. congressional pressure for reform of the UN's finances,
that committee was established with 21 members in December 1986. It
was supposed to give major donors a larger say on the budget. But within
two years the membership expanded to 34, thereby once again giving the
Third World states a dominant voice on budgetary questions. Moreover,
there is scant evidence that the major contributors seek to exert much
influence on the committee.

An equally serious problem is the opaqueness of the budget
process itself.[15] Nowhere is that more evident than in the workings
of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions,
which for more than 20 years has been run by Conrad S. M. Mselle of
Tanzania. According to New York Times correspondent Christopher Wren,

No outsider can explain how decisions get made because
Mr. Mselle, who has no formal training in finance, convenes committee
meetings behind closed doors. "This is not nuclear science, this
is financial stuff," a diplomat said. "There's no rea- son
for it to operate in secrecy."[16]

Of course, there is a reason for that secrecy; it just
does not happen to be a legitimate one. The secrecy allows Mselle to
do pretty much what he wants with other people's money. That includes
rewarding himself with a tax-free income of $134,000 a year as well
as a $60,000 salary paid to what the New York Times euphemistically
refers to as Mselle's "companion." The lack of transparency
and accountability of the Advisory Committee's decisions, policies,
and procedures is replicated throughout the United Nations.[17]

Bureaucracy Run Amok

Since the Third World majority took control of the United
Nations and its budget, total UN employment has ballooned from 1,500
to more than 50,000 worldwide. The latter figure does not include the
nearly 10,000 consultants or the peacekeeping forces, which at their
height in 1993 numbered some 80,000. No exact figure on total employment
including consultants--the hiring of consultants is a popular and much-abused
practice at the United Nations--can be given. That is because until
1994 there was no central, computerized list of personnel. Even today
there are no records of many appointments in the Secretariat.[18]

The personnel costs (including generous pension benefits)
of that army of bureaucrats consume an estimated 70 percent or more
of the UN operating budget. Given the lack of transparency, the percentage
could be even higher. That leaves relatively few financial resources
for the actual missions of the United Nations and its specialized agencies,
including the organization's much-touted humanitarian programs.

The salary and benefits packages of UN employees based
in New York City are incredibly lucrative. Statistics compiled in 1995
revealed that the average annual salary for a midlevel accountant at
the United Nations was $84,500. The salary for a comparable position
in non-UN businesses and agencies was $41,964. A UN computer analyst
could expect to receive $111,500 compared to $56,836 paid counterparts
outside the UN bureaucracy. An assistant secretary general received
$190,250; the mayor of New York City was paid $130,000.[19] The raw
figures do not convey the extent of the disparity, however, since the
salaries of UN employees are free of all taxes. In addition to their
bloated salaries, UN bureaucrats enjoy an array of costly perks, including
monthly rent subsidies of up to $3,800 and annual education grants (also
tax-free) of $12,675 per child. The UN pension program is so generous
that entry-level staffers whose pay rises only as fast as inflation
can retire in 30 years with $1.8 million.[20]

But it is not numbers alone that should be of concern.
There is the question of quality of personnel. Unlike the old League
of Nations, the United Nations has never developed a well-trained international
civil service. By nearly all accounts, a very few men and women struggle
to do most of the real work. The rest are time servers whose sloth is
reputed to be of mythic proportions. Secretary General Boutros-Ghali,
shortly after assuming his post, remarked that until he acquired his
present position he had thought the Egyptian bureaucracy was the most
inefficient in the world. He was, he admitted, quite wrong. The secretary
general also has estimated that perhaps half of the UN workforce does
nothing useful.[21] Even when work is done, it is often unnecessary.
For example, according to Richard Thornburgh, who once served as under
secretary general, "In the Office of Conference Services where
translation services are provided, we currently employ 500 secretary-stenographers
who are given the responsibility of typing the dictated version of translated
documents and returning them to the translators for editing and approval."
Those positions, of course, could be eliminated entirely if the translators
worked with word processors. The cost of that featherbedding is $20
million a year.[22]

There is no mystery about the pervasive lack of efficiency.
The bulk of UN employees worldwide are drawn from the Third World and
the now-defunct Soviet bloc, although bureaucrats from the West certainly
are not immune to the temptations of sloth. Many have no particular
skills other than cultivating support from their sponsoring governments.
Once they are inside the UN bureaucracy, it is virtually impossible
to fire them. At best, a conscientious manager (there are a few) can
force the lateral transfer of an especially unsatisfactory subordinate.
Most managers, however, do not bother even making the attempt.

Given the current rules, it is nearly impossible to correct
such problems. One reason is that, in blatant disregard of sound management
principles, the United Nations has no functioning system of personnel
evaluation. Although employees are supposedly rated on their job performance,
nearly everyone receives an excellent rating--some 90 percent, in fact,
during a recent year--which makes evaluations virtually meaningless.
All attempts to change that nonsystem of evaluation have failed--despite
five separate efforts over the last two decades--and for good reason.
Few within the United Nations want the appalling practice ended. Ending
it would challenge the decades-old policy of corrupt hiring practices,
which a majority of member-states have no interest in correcting since
they directly benefit from the status quo.[23] An irresponsible, unaccountable
bureaucracy that does not even meet minimal requirements for any professional
civil service is the wellspring of many of the other evils that make
the United Nations such a corrupt institution.

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

That brings us to the question of corruption narrowly
defined, that is, the well-known unholy trinity of waste, fraud, and
abuse. There is abundant anecdotal evidence of all three being committed
within the UN system. For example, the UN Children's Fund lost perhaps
$10 million thanks to mismanagement in Kenya. Nearly $4 million in cash
was stolen outright at UN headquarters in Mogadishu, Somalia. And lest
anyone think that such examples are confined to UN operations in Africa,
consider this recent report from the New York Times:

Nearly $497,000 earmarked for a two-week conference
on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States in
Barbados last year included $15,000 to fly in representatives of a
"national liberation movement" recognized by the Organization
of African Unity. In fact, the movement was Polisario from Western
Sahara, a desert region conspicuously short of small islands.[24]

Examples from the corrupt culture of the United Nations
could be multiplied almost endlessly, but that dreary record would still
avoid the central questions: just how much waste, fraud, and abuse is
there in the United Nations; and is it really no worse than in other
public bureaucracies, as UN apologists often contend? As to the latter
question, bureaucracies vary considerably in their honesty and effectiveness.
Anyone comparing the efficiency and rectitude of Chad's public sector
to Wisconsin's state government would come up with striking results.
In any case, the United Nations, which purports to be the conscience
of the international community, should be held to the highest ethical
standards. It should at least be judged on the same basis as the bureaucracy
of its predecessor, the League of Nations. On that basis, the comparison
is extremely unfavorable.[25]

The Quest for an Inspector General

The larger question of exactly how much corruption exists
cannot be answered with precision for the simple reason that the United
Nations has never been subjected or subjected itself to a thorough,
top-to-bottom audit. The UN Secretariat's Internal Audit Division has
long been a toothless lion. Its small staff has no jurisdiction over
the autonomous agencies, and its powers over the Secretariat itself
are minimal. The auditors rely totally on information supplied by managers;
the guilty are never identified by name; and the results are kept confidential.
It is no wonder that the Internal Audit Division usually discovers only
the most petty fraud.[26]

Until last year, in fact, the United Nations lacked an
inspector general's office, despite repeated urgings of supporters and
critics alike. Moreover, the under secretary general for administration
and management had been replaced seven times in eight years until Joseph
Connor, a former Price Waterhouse executive, took over in mid-1994.
Until Connor's appointment, the job had been held mostly by political
appointees, many of whom were inherently disinterested in management.
One of those officials spent most of his time in Namibia arranging its
independence from South African control.[27]

The Thornburgh Report

The rather obvious and much-needed appointment of a management
specialist to the post came only after a steady drumbeat of criticism,
in particular the March 1993 report of the then under secretary general
for administration and management, former U.S. attorney general Richard
Thornburgh. Thornburgh issued a report that advocated the establishment
of an inspector general with real powers, because the existing auditing
system under the General Assembly's Joint Inspection Unit was found
to be "totally lacking" in effectiveness. It was understaffed
as well as a patronage "dump- ing ground" bent on such dubious
projects as a $4 million study on "Managing Works of Art in the
United Nations." In other words, the Thornburgh report concluded
that the Joint Inspection Unit was no better than the offices and agencies
on which it was supposed to keep tabs.[28]

In its place, Thornburgh recommended creating a "strong"
inspector general's office, "a common set of accounting principles
and standards," a code of conduct that would "compel full
financial disclosure by senior management" to prevent conflicts
of interest, and an "overhaul of the performance evaluation process."[29]
Incredibly, all of those elementary principles of sound management had
been absent since the beginning of the United Nations.

Most of the sensible reforms proposed in the Thornburgh
report have been ignored. One that could not be easily dodged, however,
was appointment of an inspector general, an idea that quickly attracted
interest in the increasingly frustrated U.S. Congress. Consequently,
in 1995 a new unit under the secretary general, Internal Oversight Services,
presided over by yet another under secretary general--German diplomat
Karl Theodore Paschke--was established.[30]

Tepid Reform: The Appointment of an Inspector General

The impetus for the decision to finally create an inspector
general's office and appoint a director not controlled by the dominant
Third World faction did not, of course, originate with the United Nations
itself. Instead, in April 1994, an impatient Capitol Hill demanded the
reform "or else." The "else" was a threat to withhold
$420 million of the U.S. assessment from the financially strapped organization
until the demand was fully complied with. The congressional requirement
called for an independent inspector general with wide-ranging powers
whose reports could not be censored by the secretary general. Moreover,
whistle blowers were to be provided ample protection--correcting another
long-standing weak point in the alleged system of UN accountability.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the General Assembly
recrafted the congressional requirements and diluted the potential effectiveness
of the new post. The General Assembly was able to weaken the reform
effort thanks in large part to the refusal of Clinton administration
negotiators to stay the course. What the General Assembly finally created
was an inspector general with less than autonomous and sweeping powers.
For example, the inspector general's budget would not be independent
and he would serve at the pleasure of the secretary general--an unmistakable
sign of dependence. Nor was Paschke given the power to correct any wrongdoing
that he found, much less threaten offenders with criminal proceedings.[31]

Lifting the Rock--Barely: The Inspector General's
First Report

Such dilution of authority has contributed to the highly
limited nature of the inspector general's first report, completed seven
months after his appointment in March 1995. Short on time, funds, and
staff, that initial attempt at cost accounting at the United Nations--a
first after 50 years--produced little surprise, much less shock. Yet
even that limited effort is reported to have "demoralized"
much of the organization's staff.[32] Paschke made no pretense that
he could clean the Augean stable in seven months--a Herculean task that
would require years in any case. Therefore, he concentrated on several
priorities: peacekeeping, humanitarian services, and procurement. A
further narrowing of focus limited his investigation to abuse that constituted
outright theft. That limitation, of course, left out such concerns as
duplication and inappropriateness of efforts and overall accountability.
But even that first, limited swipe uncovered $16.8 million in out- right
fraud and waste. The following were chief among his findings, according
to one New York Times report.

In Somalia, $369,000 was paid for fuel distribution services that
a contractor did not provide.

A project director for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency,
which helps Palestinian refugees, kept $100,000 of agency money
in his private bank account and failed to disclose a personal stake
in the irrigation project under way.

In Nairobi, a staff member of the United Nations Center for Human
Settlements arranged loans worth $98,000 for a company in which
she had been a partner, and with whose director she was "closely
associated."

A travel assistant working in New York for the special commission
that supervises the dismantling of Iraq's nuclear weapons program
misappropriated $28,000 in travelers checks.[33]

The report also contained the usual criticisms of poor
management practices and abysmal personnel policy. But Paschke's overall
conclusion proved more disturbing to the cause of real reform than any
of his criticisms. The inspector general stated, "I have not found
the UN to be a more corrupt organization, an organization that shows
more fraud than any other comparable public organization."[34]

But what is a comparable organization? Certainly not
the old League of Nations, whose standards were very high. The statement,
in short, has a ring of self-serving complacency, precisely what the
United Nations does not need if it is to survive. Members of Congress
had hoped for an inspector general who would prove to be a "junkyard
dog," but U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright--no
UN buster--suggested that Paschke had thus far proved to be a "junkyard
puppy."[35]

The Internal Oversight Services Office, in short, may
well become another typical UN effort to deflect criticism without addressing
the central problem. In any event, there is likely to be ongoing controversy
and further attempts, at least on Capitol Hill, to make the United Nations
responsible and responsive to its major contributors.

Can the United Nations Be Reformed?

There is no end to the schemes proposed for reforming
the United Nations; many of them bubbled up in and around the institution's
50th anniversary. Unfortunately, most approach the issue from the wrong
assumption: that the chief problem is a lack of money. To be sure, many
nations "owe" billions--the United States, in particular,
which is now $1.2 billion in arrears. That is hardly a new situation.
In September 1993, for example, some 116 countries were behind in their
payments while only 62 were paid in full. Two years later little had
changed. At the end of December 1995, 91 of 185 members had not paid
their share of the regular UN budget.[36] In 1993 a blue-ribbon panel
sponsored by the Ford Foundation and presided over by Paul Volcker,
former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Shijuro Ogata, former
deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, proposed to resolve the United
Nations' cash-flow problems through a variety of means. The panel's
principal recommendation was that past dues and present ones be paid
in four quarterly installments, "instead of a single lump sum in
the beginning of the year."[37]

The Independent Revenue Panacea

More recently, the secretary general has suggested that the cure for the United
Nations' financial woes is to give the world body taxing power. That would enable
the organization to raise revenues directly and would give the institution an
unprecedented degree of independence. Indeed, it would greatly diminish, if
not eliminate, the financial control possessed (at least theoretically) by the
member-states. Suggestions such as imposing a surcharge on international airline
tickets or charging a fee for foreign exchange transactions--which amount to
between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion per day--have been met with scant interest
in the Clinton administration and open hostility in the Republican-controlled
Congress.[38]

Critics have raised the red flag of world government
in response to proposals for taxing authority. But a more realistic
objection is that such schemes would enhance the corrupt nature of the
United Nations, whose core defect is an utter lack of accountability.
The United Nations certainly is not accountable to its most important
financial contributor, the United States, nor to the other major powers
that largely provide the remaining share of the money. Nor can accountability
be found with the secretary general, the chief administrative officer
according to the UN Charter. Occupants of that post have regularly pleaded
that they cannot be held accountable--none more emphatically than the
incumbent, who contends that the member-nations are all-powerful in
questions of responsibility.[39] Freeing the United Nations of any form
of control by the major contributors would make that problem worse,
not better.

Since the negative reaction to the secretary general's
proposals for raising new revenues, he has tried another tack. This
time he has proposed to reduce the U.S. share of the general budget
from the current 25 percent to 15 or 20 percent. In addition, he has
in hand a recommendation from his management experts to cut the UN Secretariat
staff based in New York by 1,150 positions.[40] Such suggestions come
at a very late date and merely reflect the growing pressure on the United
Nations from the U.S. Congress, among others. Moreover, the steps are
modest ones--the UN specialized agencies, for example, would not shrink
at all--and do not address the larger question of accountability. Why
U.S. officials should be satisfied with such half measures, even if
they were to be implemented, is very much an open question.

A Radical Reform Agenda

How can the United Nations be made accountable in a meaningful
sense of the term? Before addressing that primary question, however,
we need to spell out the realistic options facing the organization.
There are only two. The United Nations must either be radically reformed
and its various bodies and agencies made strictly accountable to their
primary donors, or failing that--and the record of failed reform attempts
warrants pessimism--the principal donors, especially the United States,
should end any further obligation to support financially an organization
that is inherently corrupt and unfixable. The Reagan administration's
withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization in 1984 is a model of what could be done.

A Real Audit

There must be an agreement among the major donors that
a thorough housecleaning is in order. The United States could theoretically
pursue that project alone, but without the cooperation of the Japanese,
Russians, Germans, French, British, and to a much lesser extent, the
Chinese, the UN bureaucracy, as in the past, would be well positioned
to stymie a grand audit.

That audit must be carried out by a properly staffed,
completely independent inspector general with a warrant allowing complete
access to all UN and related-agency records. Indeed, some of the worst
waste and duplication can be found in the affiliated agencies. For example,
at least two dozen UN agencies are involved in food and agricultural
policy, including one of the most notoriously ill managed, the Food
and Agricultural Organization.[41] The proliferation of bureaucratic
entities and the lack of pruning of obsolete ones is evident throughout
the United Nations; agencies, councils, committees, and other bureaucratic
bric-a-brac once established are almost never eliminated even though
their usefulness has long since come to an end. The Trusteeship Council,
for example, still absorbs resources even though it no longer has any
wards.[42]

The lack of organizational coherence that characterizes
the United Nations generally is especially striking in the affiliated
agencies--which spend the largest share of the overall UN budget. Consider
this observation by one seasoned diplomatic correspondent:

The chiefs of some autonomous UN agencies rule their
fiefdoms like autocrats, answering to no one. Regional mafias of UN
bureaucrats have taken root, consolidating their power through favoritism
in hiring and promotions. Recipient governments also routinely plunder
UN programs, diverting aid from intended beneficiaries with little
remonstration from UN agencies.[43]

A comprehensive audit cannot be completed in haste
and could well take up to five years to finish. Moreover, the scope
of the inquiry cannot be limited to fraud, waste, and outright theft,
narrowly defined. Rather, the approach should be that of zero-based
budgeting, both financially and conceptually. In other words, the audit
needs to determine, not only whether the various bodies are effectively
performing their missions, but also whether a particular mission is
worth pursuing in the first place.

Curbing Pretentious Conferences

One of the most egregious abuses is the United Nations'
penchant for holding international conferences of dubious worth. A splendid
example was last year's $2.5 million Summit for Social Development held
in Copenhagen, Denmark. Featuring 100 world leaders, the summit (and
its dozen preparatory meetings) fuzzily focused on poverty, job creation,
and "solidarity." The outcome was roughly divisible into two
categories: bromides that few could quarrel with or find of practical
use and proposals for yet more government intervention to promote societal
betterment.[44]

The UN conference that fretted about "social issues"
was matched by huge conferences on women in Beijing in 1995, population
control in Cairo in 1994, and, of course, the Rio environmental summit
in 1992. All attracted thousands of delegates who were usually pursuing
agendas associated with the statist left. Although few results can be
pointed to-- resolutions passed are not binding, fortunately, on anyone--
there is little indication, considering the sponsors and the size of
the attendance, that any serious work can ever be achieved at such gatherings.
As a result, even boosters of the United Nations (including the Clinton
administration) are growing critical of the proliferation of high-profile
conferences. Said one unnamed senior U.S. official, "We think the
General Assembly, which includes all 185 UN member states, is the proper
forum for addressing these issues, and it's time to stop running around
the world wasting resources when the same work could be done right here
in New York at much less cost."[45]

Alternative Organizations

A reform audit should also examine whether some of the
functions of the United Nations can be carried out more efficiently
by other organizations. We are no longer living in the world of 1945.
In the last 50 years private, volunteer organizations and state-run
agencies (the U.S. Peace Corps, the British Volunteer Service) have
sprung up like mushrooms. Many are vastly more efficient than (often)
rival UN agencies, which are top-heavy with bad management and provide
relatively few dollars for actual humanitarian relief even when those
funds are not diverted to other less worthy causes by host governments.
It is not heartless to no longer accept at face value what bureaucrats
claim they do for the world's poor and suffering. A vivid example of
the collective wisdom about the UN humanitarian mission was the General
Assembly's approval in 1984 of a $73.5 million regional conference center
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That decision was made at a time when the
murderous regime of Mengistu Haile-Mariam had induced a massive famine
that left international relief agencies scrambling for donations.[46]
Scarce resources wasted, and therefore not available to help those in
need, serve no legitimate purpose.

A thorough scrutiny of the largely unexamined and unaudited
UN budgets would allow primary donors to have for the first time the
data with which to make rational decisions about those budgets rather
than simply guess about what is actually being done to serve their legitimate
national interests or even the broader interests of the inter- national
community. The suspicion is that few UN programs and agencies would
pass the test. Those that are found wanting and refuse to change or
voluntarily go out of business should simply be starved of funds.

We would lose very little by taking that step. Functional,
highly specialized agencies such as the World Meteorological Association
and the International Civil Aviation Organization, many of which predate
the founding of the United Nations, would carry on pretty much as they
always have. Useful diplomatic initiatives that the United Nations can
do best could be preserved--provided that a corps of competent, and
neutral, career diplomats can be recruited and retained. Peacekeeping
missions would be limited to the relatively inexpensive monitoring arrangements
that have worked over the years. Large-scale "peacemaking"
operations, as attempted in Somalia and Bosnia, should be relegated
to the wastebasket of failed experiments.

Conclusion

If the United Nations is to continue for another half
century, more will be required than showering the institution with happy-talk
birthday cards. The organization needs a vast overhaul of mission and
method. In recent years the world body has been subjected to a variety
of criticisms and suggested reforms. But the critiques rarely go far
enough, and the remedies, particularly in the area of financial reform,
would probably make matters worse rather than better. That is especially
true of suggestions to give the United Nations even limited taxing authority.

The U.S. Congress can and probably will play a large
leadership role in the campaign for either reform or abandonment. But
the Congress cannot do it alone. The president has the solemn responsibility
to take the lead in presenting the case for a continued U.S. interest
in and support for an international organization that has been generously
subsidized by American taxpayers yet has shown scant regard for their
interests. UN personnel do not have jobs and budgets by divine right--although
many act as if they do. Nor can their privilege of utter unaccountability
be tolerated much longer.

A half century of experience with the United Nations
should have resulted in a real review of its flaws. Instead, supporters
of the organization frequently act as though it should be immune from
criticism. Far more realism is required if the United Nations is ever
to reach its centenary.

Greater realism may lead to the conclusion that the United
Nations cannot be salvaged--or at least that the burden of doing so
may exceed any prospective benefit. Strip away the sentimental, often
self-serving rhetoric, the utopian and hence unachievable aspirations,
and it may well be that the international body is no more relevant to
the world's problems than the Holy Roman Empire was in its waning decades.
If that is the case, we should rid ourselves of the United Nations as
Napoleon did Europe of the empire in 1808

Notes

[1] See, for example, Thomas W. Lippman, "Florida
GOP Fresh man Moves to Scuttle the U.N.," Washington Post, November
6, 1995, p. A9, which outlines the views of Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.),
who has introduced a bill calling for an end to U.S. membership in the
United Nations after a four-year transition period. The congressman
flatly denied that such a move was a retreat into isolationism, noting
that he believed the United States would and should maintain its alliances
with liberal democracies. For two recent sugges tions for limited UN
reform, see Inguar Carlsson, "The U.N. at 50: A Time to Reform,"
Foreign Policy 100 (Fall 1995): 3-18; and Ruben D. Mendez, "Paying
for Peace and Develop ment," Foreign Policy 100 (Fall 1995): 19-31.

[2] Even the relatively successful operation in Mozambique
demonstrated that various UN agencies are often shockingly incompetent.
For example, the Office for Humanitarian Affairs Coordination managed
to interfere with the work of other groups, which delayed unnecessarily
the removal of land mines. See Tim Carrington, "Incompetence of
the U.N. in Mozambique Casts Shadow over the Future of Haiti,"
Wall Street Journal, September 26, 1994, p. A10.

[3] John R. Bolton, "A Good Year at the U.N.?"
Washington Post, January 17, 1994, p. A23.

[4] John F. Harris, "Clinton Calls on United Nations
to Focus, Says It Must Trim Bureaucracy," Washington Post, June
27, 1995, p. A14. Other speakers included UN Secretary General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and poet Maya
Angelou.

[5] Simon Duke, "The U.N. Finance Crisis: A History
and Analysis," International Relations, August 1992, pp. 133-37.

[6] Even if the United States had been a full league
member (as it was Washington played a role behind the scenes), it is
improbable that America would have sent troops to Spain or Ethiopia,
marched into the Rhineland, prevented the Anschluss with Austria, or
banged the tables at Munich in defense of Czechoslovakia. Given America's
modest armed forces and the public fear of again being caught up in
fighting foreign wars, the belief that such activism would have been
forthcoming is based on wishful thinking, not logic.

[7] According to article 16 of the league's covenant,
"It is the duty of each member of the League to decide for himself
whether a breach of the Covenant has been committed." Quoted in
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and
Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), p. 304.

[8] One mark of the Security Council's decline is apparent
in this comparison: in 1948 the council met 168 times; a decade later
the number of meetings had dropped to 36. Ibid., p. 485.

[10] For a first-hand account of Kennedy's "profane"
reaction to the neutrals' moral cop-out at the Belgrade meeting, see
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White
House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 520.

[18] Ibid. According to Wren, 1,500 of the 7,000 Secretariat
personnel have no valid appointments. Those who have spent time in Third
World government offices know exactly how that could happen; "employment"
in such governments is often a very casual concept involving little
or nothing in the way of a paper trail. For the total number of UN personnel,
see Julia Preston, "U.N. Wrestles with Sexual Harassment in Its
Ranks," Washington Post, September 8, 1994, p. A29; and Catherine
Toups, "Peacekeeping Falloff May Lead to U.N. Cut," Washington
Times, January 13, 1996, p. A10. See also William Branigin, "As
U.N. Expands, So Do Its Problems," Washington Post, September 20,
1992, p. A1.

[19] Karen Cheney, "It's the U.N.'s 50th Birthday,
But Its Employees Get the Gifts," Money, November 1995, p. 27.
The disparity in salaries is a long-standing problem. See General Accounting
Office, "United Nations: Personnel Com pensation and Pension Issues,"
Report to Congressional Requesters, February 1987.

[22] Richard Thornburgh, Testimony, in Management and
Misman agement at the United Nations: Hearing before the Subcommit tee
on International Security, International Organizations and Human Rights
of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 103d Cong., 1st sess., March
5, 1993 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1993), p. 20.

[24] Wren, "Mismanagement and Waste Erode U.N.'s
Best Inten tions," p. A1. His report goes on to note that $53,000
was requested for the 1994-95 UN budget for consultants' analy sis of
South African apartheid even though the country's first multiracial
elections were held in April 1994.

[25] James Avery Joyce, Broken Star: The Story of the
League of Nations (1919-1939)(Swansea: Christopher Davies, 1978), pp.
78-79; and Jack C. Plano and Robert E. Riggs, Forging World Order: The
Politics of International Organization (New York: Macmillan, 1967),
pp. 22-23, 172-73. The league's Secretariat numbered about 600 and was
drawn from 50 dif ferent nations. Yet the league's first secretary general,
Sir Eric Drummond, a senior British civil servant, insisted that the
Secretariat be recruited on an individual basis and that its members
live up to the standards of the British civil service, then regarded
as the world's most efficient.

[27] He was Martii Ahtisaari, at present Finland's president.
Connor has had some small successes. His first budget proposal for 1996-97
is actually $109 million less than the previous one. He has selected
some 200 jobs for elimination out of a Secretariat staff of more than
10,000. In UN terms, those are major accomplishments, but they hardly
address the fundamental concern. See ibid. See also Julia Preston, "U.N.
Chief Fires American in Charge of Reforming World Body," Washington
Post, January 18, 1994, p. A20.

[28] Richard Thornburgh, "Report to the Secretary
General of the United Nations," March 1, 1993, reprinted in Management
and Mismanagement of the United Nations, pp. 100-101. Thornburgh, at
the request of President Bush, served one year as under secretary general
in order to prepare the report on mismanagement at the United Nations.

[37] "Financing an Effective United Nations: A Report
of the Independent Advisory Group on U.N. Financing," Ford Founda
tion, New York, April 1993, p. 26. On the current U.S. bill, see Catherine
Toups, "U.N. Considers Imposing Taxes," Washington Times,
January 16, 1996, p. A1.

[38] The idea was first broached in 1994 in D'Orville
and Najman, pp. 135-44. See also Mendez, p. 25.

[40] "The United Nations Heads for Bankruptcy,"
The Econo mist, February 10, 1996, p. 41; and John M. Goshko, "To
Help Ward Off Bankruptcy, U.N. May Lay Off More Than 1,000 Staff,"
Washington Post, February 3, 1996, p. A16. Appar ently, some within
the bureaucracy are getting the word as well. Rubens Ricopero, the new
director of the UN Confer ence on Trade and Development, is suggesting
that his staff shrink by 10 percent. Perhaps. But UNCTAD for decades
has been a steady advocate of the developed nations' transfer ring resources
to the underdeveloped. Only lately have UNCTAD officials suggested that
the private sector should have any input into the operations of the
organization. In any case, any legitimate functions the UNCTAD may have
ac quired could be transferred to the World Trade Organization. Frances
Williams, "UNCTAD Chief Pledges Sweeping Reforms," Financial
Times, January 30, 1996, p. 5.

[41] See remarks of Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.) on FAO
cor ruption in Management and Mismanagement at the United Na tions,
p. 3.

[44] Anne Applebaum, "The U.N. Offers Summits, Not
Solu tions," Wall Street Journal, March 8, 1995, p. A20; and Preston,
"Massive World Body Resists Shaping Up," p. A1. The Social
Summit was the creation of Chile's ambassador to the United Nations,
Juan Somavia, who lobbied Third World nations for their support of that
dubious enterprise. Ibid.